- When more than 2 members are willing, start a study on simple objects and be able to draw them from memory at the end of the week. You can wait for a prompt or start a prompt

- Things in the world are always complex yes, but things like cups, kettles, even small animals (So long as you're able to break them down properly) are made up of simple shapes and forms. If it comes to things like the human body then focus on singular aspects rather than the whole body

* Construct the object when you draw it last, or just go with how you remember it. However be honest and draw what you have recorded from your mind, otherwise the workshop is moot

After a friend of mine said that he's studied trucks and added features to his 'visual library' I stopped to think of what he actually meant.

Quote Originally Posted by the black frog View PostDon't just look at things... SEE them.

As a daily exercise you should push your eye to "see" and analyse what you see rather than having it pass on front of you without really catching what will be usefull to you later in your drawing.

Most people are surrounded by things all the time and come to you asking can you draw me a teapot or a bottle of vine or whatever... and they are gobsmacked when you can... Those things are surrounding them every day,!!! they are just blind to it. They see the concept of the teapot but they don't see THIS SPECIFIC teapot with what makes it unique.

When you look at something, you should have the eye of someone who is trying to understand every aspect of the fabrication of it.What is the texture, color, shape, what makes it different from another specimen of the same species - that applies to everything and anything -It is tiresome at the beguining caus' we're not use to pay that much attention to what's around us, but it gets better with time... and You and up doing it in auto pilot after a while.

From what I hear it's also possible to have an external visual library where you basically collect a crap tonne of photos for references and the like. Apparently both methods work.

So I had this idea that we actually go through the process of learning how to draw something just from memory and hopefully drawing it from a side view and above view with out own learnt method of construction

count me in, i love this sort of thing and need to do it morei think we should focus on objects/props rather than the body, since thats sort of a whole subject on its own, and we could spend a whole year just on that :Pnice idea lego :P

sorry for the delay, my internet has been a pain i couldnt load MR properly the last couple of days for some reason so didnt post much.i think like you said in the first post vehicles is a nice idea, since most stories/illustrations often have one in there somewhere.

narrowing it down to individual ideas i would like to try out:train interior or exterior (quite common in manga and anime)bicycle (another manga must)motorbike (girl in bikini or otherwise similar clothes optional :P)

ermmmm nothing else comes to mind for now but i'd love to try out those. motorbikes are just cool, and have plenty of detail to copy and remember,so maybe that first, or a warm-up round with a toaster or something? that way we can adjust the workshop to improve it :P

i think we should look at this workshop like this:-copy the picture exactly-draw the picture, copying but use guidelines, trying to build up the picture rather than copy it-draw at a different angle (perhaps still copying the original picture or another one?, using guidelines?)-draw from memory, using guidelines-draw from another angle from memory using guidelines-change the picture, but drawing from memory (like make the motorbike have 4 wheels or big lights who knows)-include it in a larger piece, make it part of a scene or use a part of the object in something else

probably in that order. the last 2 parts is a good idea, because most of the time you are creating your own version of objects, so you want to be able to change them and add or take away stuff to make it cooler, especially for a science fiction story with mechas and stuff, you make up the robots etc from bits of everything you have seen.

will we all try and work from the same selected picture like in the character workshops?or select our own, which gives us the chance to pick something more to our own style?

That sounds a lot more complicated than what I had in mind in terms of retaining something in memory. That's why I thought we should focus on singular aspects rather than entire wholes. We'd end up going ot square one where we have to supplement stuff with tonnes of references. Unless it really is possible to draw a motorcycle from memory from any angle and still make it recognizeable. I'd take my chances with a toaster for sure, and even that is dubios.

Picking our own would be better. Less restrictive that way. I think in general even for workshops like 'Draw X anime character' people should be allowed to use several of their own references to get proper ideas of how to draw them as they like.

I'll choose my my own brand as well haha.

The grid system sounds like a good idea, but I was just concerned about the complexity. It'll be good to have a system to work with too

We're doing it to be able to draw it from the mind properly after making studies throughout the week. So copy, photograph, trace as much as you want. So long as in the end you're able to draw it from memory...